Peter Ellis: The growth of SaaS for generic business applications seems to be relentless. Do you see a similar growth pattern in the asset management industry?

Christophe Volard: The asset management industry is not homogeneous, there are different types of asset management organizations such as investment managers, fund administrators, transfer agencies, custodians, consultants/advisors, and asset owners.

William Haney: Firstly, it’s very important to distinguish SaaS from the Cloud, because they are not the same. Most of us understand and use Cloud applications on our mobile devices. The essence of SaaS is web-based, scalable capabilities where the content is partially or wholly managed by a third party. Whether you refer to SaaS or Cloud, the reality is that

Peter Ellis:While Software as a Service is far more prevalent than ever before in the asset management space, SaaS is not a new concept. So perhaps we can start by discussing the material differences between the “old” and “new” age of SaaS. Can you expand on this point, please?

Kathleen Keenan: Sure. Let’s start with a clear definition of SaaS. In its most basic form, SaaS is a web-based application that is hosted by the software provider, but there is much more to it than that.

This month, we will begin to explore Software As a Service, and the notion that we are now in what I refer to as, “The New Age of SaaS.” Over the next few weeks, in collaboration with various members of BI-SAM’s executive team, I will address the five ideas outlined below, which I believe signal the evolution of SaaS.

Outsourcing has been a significant feature of the asset management industry for at least 30 years, but opinion on the perceived success of outsourcing is still divided. Conventional wisdom holds that back office functions can be outsourced and that this will lead to a reduction in operating costs. In this post, I will challenge this conventional wisdom